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- [00:00]
Tanya Mosley
This message comes from Capella University.
- [00:03]
Alfre Woodard
That spark you feel, that's your drive.
- [00:05]
Tanya Mosley
For more. Capella University's Flexpath learning format lets you earn your degree at your pace without putting life on pause. Learn more@capella.edu. this is FRESH AIR. I'm Tonya Moseley, and my guest today is award winning actor Alfre Woodard. We've been watching her on television, film and the stage for decades. She has played wives, mothers, nurses, friends, lovers and prison wardens. Women carrying their families through the ordinary and the unimaginable. Her work, in a very real way, has become a record of American life. Now she's in a new sci fi Netflix series called the Burroughs from the creators of Stranger Things. The Duffer brothers have said the show exists because they couldn't understand why no one had made another Cocoon. Since Cocoon, the 1985 film about retirees who discover a fountain of youth. Well, 40 years later, they've set their version in an upscale retirement community in New Mexico where something supernatural is preying on the residents. Woodard plays Judy, a retired journalist who was sidelined in her career but hasn't let go of her instincts. She lives in the community with her husband, played by Clark Peters. And when a recent widower moves next door, Judy does what she's done her whole working life. She starts looking him up.
- [01:26]
Alfre Woodard
I found his wife's obituary. Who? Our new neighbor. Samuel Darwin Cooper, born Chicago, Illinois, December 10, 1953. You gotta stop stalking people. Not stalking, investigating. You're not a reporter anymore, journalist. And that makes it stalking. His wife died of a stroke five months ago. Oh, gosh. He was young, not even 70. He worked for Northrop Grumman 35 years as an aeronautical engineer. So we know he's smart. Education is not the learning of the facts, but the training of the mind to think. Who said that? Einstein? No, maybe Mr. Peabody, one of the other. I don't remember. Art, I was thinking we should go for a walk today. Your doctors say you need exercise. Real exercise. Not the bendy, bendy stuff. I can't. I'm playing golf with Max and Wong. Well, are we still on for a film tonight? Dog Day Afternoon is playing at the Palace. I'm sorry, I forgot. Loser buys dinner and Max always loses. So, you know, so. Hey, to Max and whomp. Okie dokie. Mm. See you later.
- [02:50]
Tanya Mosley
The ensemble cast is mostly actors over 60. Alfred Molina, Geena Davis, Clark Peters, Denis O' Hare, and Bill Pullman. Woodard earned an Oscar nomination in 1984 for Cross Creek and over the decades since, she's been nominated for 18 Emmys, winning four, and won a Golden Globe with roles in classics like Paul Passionfish, Crooklyn, 12 Years a Slave, and Clemency. Alfred Woodard, welcome to FRESH air. It is such an honor to have you.
- [03:21]
Alfre Woodard
I am happy to be present with you, Tonya.
- [03:24]
Tanya Mosley
Okay, so let's get into it. I have a story that I have to ask you about regarding the set of the Burroughs. So the story goes, there was an HR meeting on Zoom, and you and the other actors were behaving so badly like middle schoolers that's been kicked out of class. And that just made me think, what is this set? What was it like?
- [03:46]
Alfre Woodard
It is. You know, just think about all the people that were in the back of the room. And Constantine told, Pipe down. Pipe. Sit down, sit down. That's not what we're. We're not doing that now. And, you know, maybe there was HR when we were, you know, in our first decade or two in the business, but we didn't know about it or what they did. But now we have learned how to. How to take care of environments, make them safe. Back in the day, you just had to, like, partner up and, you know, clan up and go, like, okay, don't mess with my friend again. Don't tell. You hurt her feelings. Come over here. We need to talk. That kind of stuff. But so we had this HR meeting, and, you know, I think it's more like over 65. And our showrunners, Jeff Addis and Will Matthews, they're like, in their early to mid-40s, but, you know, most of us were people. People were saying things like, can you hear? I can't hear. Somebody said, hello, none of us can hear you. We can't hear. And just being that right, rallying the class back together when we're hearing things like, you know, no, you can't call people, honey, what about, baby, no, you can't call people, but what if you really like them? And somebody said, can I say, you know, your butt looks really good in those jeans? No, definitely not. How will I know if my butt looks good if nobody tells me? So it was that kind of very, you know, irreverent kind of stuff going on, but just, you know, giggling and laughing. But that's, you know, that's our generation. And that's one of the things that I think we bring to the boroughs and that Will and Jeff wrote in. But we expanded on it because, you know, they still haven't really shaved yet themselves at only mid-40s.
- [05:41]
Tanya Mosley
What were some of the things you had them change for sure that you said, this is not what a 65 plus year old woman or group of friends would be doing living in a retirement community.
- [05:54]
Alfre Woodard
Well, I believe you haven't seen these seniors on camera before. Maybe you saw one, but they were sort of an outlier in a script and used as comic relief as something. But how we live, how we relax together, what we say to each other, and the fact that your chemistry, your sexual chemistry only gets more particular and refined as it goes on. So, you know, there'll be some people like, ooh, if my mom or my grandmom or granddad was flirting, that would make me go, ew. It's like, no. How do you think you got here? And flirting is love. It's a way of reaching out. It's what humans do. And when you have people that don't have to answer to anybody and they don't have to answer to society saying, what does that lady think she's doing showing her thighs at this age? What? Well, yeah. There's nobody to tell you. No. And if they do, you can tell them where to go. Because you can't tell somebody of a 60 nothing.
- [07:02]
Tanya Mosley
Well, that's the truth. Your character Judy is also in an open marriage with one rule. Don't fall in love. And of course she does with Jack, who is Bill Pullman, played by Bill Pullman. But when Jack turns up dead, I'm not spoiling it here, but when he turns up dead, Judy is the one asking what really happened. I want to play a clip where she's in the kitchen table with her neighbor Sam, played by Alfred Molina, telling him about her relationship with Jack for the first time. Let's listen.
- [07:36]
Alfre Woodard
Only rule was don't fall in love. That you fell in love with J. I did. I'm not deluded. I see the ears etched across my face. I feel the weight of my body. But Jack, Jack saw a girl in me. He could see it. And he respected the woman. Jack could. He could. Jack saw us the way we wish we were. He was good. Now he's gone. Everybody loved Jack, and Jack certainly did love everybody. I was just one in the line. That's not the way Jack described you. What did he say? He was seeing someone special?
- [09:06]
Tanya Mosley
That's Alfre Woodard and Alfred Molina in the new Netflix series the Burrows. That line, jack saw the girl in me, but also the woman too. The way you land that line, it's just, it hits it and it. Days after I watched it I was kind of thinking about what the significance of that because I think it's very rare to never where women are seen at a certain point in their lives for the totality of who they are.
- [09:36]
Alfre Woodard
That's one of the things that the guys heard me when I talked about it, This affair that she was having and the relationship that Art and Judy have. And at first it seemed kind of suburban and like early 60s, if not late 50s.
- [10:06]
Tanya Mosley
Why? In what way? What do you mean? Because of that whole idea of an affair within a neighborhood.
- [10:11]
Alfre Woodard
Yeah. Like you, it's judgmental and within the strictures of a very strict, actually paternalistic kind of life that Americans led then. But I said, you know, the thing is, again, we are that generation. We do backstory. Any actor that's really going to work, that will bring a character to life as a human being, you do your backstory. So you know, where the history, you don't just say your lines, but you have to create a history for yourself from the time you were born all the way up to be able to say even one line if you're going to have people believe it. And so, you know, I decided that we went to Berkeley, the two of us.
- [11:02]
Tanya Mosley
You and your husband.
- [11:03]
Alfre Woodard
Yeah, Art, who Clark Peters plays. We are at, you know, we're educated, we're black, we're in California. It's of that age. What would have been happening? All of San Francisco was lit up.
- [11:19]
Tanya Mosley
Free love.
- [11:20]
Alfre Woodard
Yeah. So. And also the vanguard, the Panthers were in the, in the Bay Area. So just know this is where we're coming from. But the thing is, what is it? And I said, yes, I might be 70, but Judy, the girl is still there. And some people, you're sitting on the train or the bus or just in traffic, LA and people look at white hair and all they see is a two dimensional lady stoop there. It's like if you talk to that woman and look at the pictures from her in her 20s or 30s with her heels all the way over her head and her doing, you know, tango bouncing, whatever. But you wouldn't know that if you look at her and just look at her hair. And so that's the thing about accumulating years, is people take away your humanity when they look at you, when they just observe you. But whatever you were doing or you are doing at 20 or 30 or 40, you think you discovered it. Oh, darling. And just like anybody playing music, anybody painting, the longer you do it, the more fine tuned you are at it. We're constantly in the process of becoming More of our true selves. So look to your elders.
- [12:53]
Tanya Mosley
We're gonna come back to the Burroughs. But, you know, I was so excited to talk with you because you're one of those rare actors that span generations. I can talk to my mother about your work. In the 70s and 80s, I sit squarely in the 90s, 2000s. My kids are like, oh, Series of Unfortunate Events, you know.
- [13:12]
Alfre Woodard
Yes, yes, yes.
- [13:14]
Tanya Mosley
Okay. And we all ask the same question, like, tell me about her life. So let's talk about that for a minute. And I want to go to the moment where you realized you wanted to be an actor. You're 14, Catholic school in Tulsa. Once a month, your film studies teacher, is it Brother Patrick?
- [13:35]
Alfre Woodard
Brother Patrick o', Brien, Yeah.
- [13:37]
Tanya Mosley
He would bus the class to art cinema. And you saw this film, this French film about a middle aged man, and you said, what?
- [13:45]
Alfre Woodard
Okay, it was. He didn't teach us film. Brother Pat taught me creative writing. And he, along with Sister Sylvia, taught us marriage.
- [13:54]
Tanya Mosley
Marriage and creative writing. Now, this is funny.
- [13:57]
Alfre Woodard
But wait. With a Christian brother and a nun daughter's marriage. And of course, we had a field day with that. And they were good sports and loved it. But I was at Bishop Kelly High and they would bust the whole school, 750 kids. And it was to watch whatever Brother Pat was on about. So that's where we started. Citizen Kane, Sundays and Sibel. Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, Incident at Owl Creek Bridge. All of those sorts of films that then you got. When you got to college and film studies, you know, you'd already spoken about that. And so I remember we were excited, like, oh, we're going to the movies. Going to the movies. And you get there and there are subtitles. You're like, this is not a movie. This is a lesson we have to read. And, you know, just sitting there sucking on a Twizzler, and before you know it, your heart is gripped. You're identifying with a middle aged French man. He goes to see Sundays and Sebel.
- [15:05]
Tanya Mosley
Ah, Sundays and Savelle.
- [15:07]
Alfre Woodard
Your eyes are filling up with water. And I'm reading the subtitles. And I realized then and with the other things we were seeing how emotionally. Emotionally they made me. And I immediately saw film, how powerful the moving image was. And I wanted to be involved in it.
- [15:27]
Tanya Mosley
You wanted to be involved in it, but did you see yourself as a showman? How did you come to that moment to say, I want to be on the screen and I want to be. I want to be these actors I'm watching?
- [15:44]
Alfre Woodard
I didn't Think of them as actors until I started watching De Niro. They don't wacino those actors on screen. That's when I said, okay, that direction. But there is a nun, Sister Rachel Ann Graham, who should have been an actor, but she went into combat. And what she knew, because I was in public schools in elementary school, and what she knew, and she fought me on all the time, was I always felt I can remember stuff out of the book. I can remember stuff I read. So you can't mark this wrong. She'd mark my paper up.
- [16:25]
Tanya Mosley
You were good at memorizing.
- [16:27]
Alfre Woodard
And she said, I know what Mr. Hawthorne thought. I read the book. I asked what you thought. And so I. It was a different way of learning then. So she. Somebody was dropping out, had to drop out, was sick a week to learn the script of the play. She says, you need to. I need you to do this. And I said, oh, no, Sister. I couldn't possibly pretend to be. Stand up in front of other people pretending to be somebody else.
- [16:56]
Tanya Mosley
And how old were you?
- [16:57]
Alfre Woodard
About this. 14.
- [16:58]
Tanya Mosley
14.
- [16:58]
Alfre Woodard
About this 15 at that point. But I was, you know, a student leader. I was loud and bodacious. But there's something about. It's like, what? Pretending to be something else. She says, it's not for you, Alfrey, it's for God.
- [17:16]
Tanya Mosley
And how did you interpret that at the time? When someone tells you you being up on stage is not for you, it's for God.
- [17:22]
Alfre Woodard
Well, it made sense. And I thought, okay, you know, I had a lot of love and support and creature comfort in my life. I had a good life. And I just went, okay. I honestly said to God, we are even after this. And so I got in the play, and so I got on stage.
- [17:48]
Tanya Mosley
So you're on stage at this moment? Yes.
- [17:50]
Alfre Woodard
And it was as if I'd been walking around on dry land my whole life doing the breaststroke. And, yeah, widow does that. She weird, but she got some good ideas about stuff. And then just somebody came by me and tipped me in the water. And that same oddity propelled me into just the most open freedom I've ever felt in my life is being in the middle of
- [18:26]
Tanya Mosley
your purpose.
- [18:27]
Alfre Woodard
Between action and cut, it's like, okay, that's it. That's what I want to do. Well, because she calls my parents, says, you have to see Alfred. You know, she. You know Alfred, she's an actor. She's just. She's an artist. And my father, who. I'll tell you about him, they both went, oh. Oh. Everybody was so like, thank God relieved.
- [18:47]
Tanya Mosley
Is there a place for her? Finally?
- [18:49]
Alfre Woodard
We thought the girl had gone crazy. So, yeah.
- [18:55]
Tanya Mosley
And I think that's such a powerful metaphor to say. You felt like you were on land doing the breaststroke. And that feeling of hitting the water, I mean, that's more powerful than anything I've heard. You come from a family of storytellers, though, right? Like, you tell this story of your mom making big pots of food and people coming from all over, including your family, you'd sit down and tell stories. But what I love about this story, and I want to know where your place is in it, is you all were really like listening and discerning on the story. So if someone's story didn't add up, you'd be like, uh, y' all lying. You lying.
- [19:32]
Alfre Woodard
Yes. Yes. And black people love to jump up and holler, oh, that's a lie. That's a liar. Everybody jumps around and goes crazy and it's a good time. But also a lot of the stories, it's family gathering and chosen family. So a lot of the stories are being retold, but you want to hear it again. And you could be 4 years old and somebody would give you the floor, but nobody was saying, come on, baby, tell the story. It's like, okay, all right, come on, come on, Ali. It better be good.
- [20:01]
Tanya Mosley
Our guest today is award winning actor Alfre Woodard. We'll be right back after a short break. I'm Tonya Moseley and this is FRESH AIR.
- [20:10]
Commercial Announcer
This message is from AT&T with your Summer Essential. The iPhone 17 Pro. Its center stage front camera auto adjusts the frame to fit everyone into group selfies. Right now at, at and t. Ask how you can get iPhone 17 Pro on them with eligible iPhone. Trade in any condition requires trade in of iPhone 15 or higher excluding iPhone 16e and 17e requires eligible plan. Terms and restrictions apply, subject to change. Visit att.com iPhone for details.
- [20:42]
Tanya Mosley
This message comes from BetterHelp. May is mental health awareness Month, a reminder that you don't have to do this life alone. From loneliness to anxiety to financial stress, right now people everywhere are struggling. But having a licensed therapist with you by video phone or chat can make a difference. And BetterHelp makes it easy. Sign up now and get 10% off@betterhelp.com NPR that's betterhelp.com NPR this message comes
- [21:13]
Commercial Announcer
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- [21:32]
Tanya Mosley
So you realize acting is your path. You go to Boston University. Boston University in the early 70s was kind of a strange but important place. It sounds like.
- [21:43]
Alfre Woodard
Oh, yes, it was.
- [21:44]
Tanya Mosley
You were there with Paul Rubens and Geena Davis, who is a co star in the Burrows.
- [21:50]
Alfre Woodard
Yes, and we did a sitcom together years ago called Sarah. Right. With Bill Maher and Bronson Pinchot and Ray.
- [21:59]
Tanya Mosley
Was Bill Pullman also in it?
- [22:00]
Alfre Woodard
No, Bill Maher.
- [22:01]
Tanya Mosley
Oh, Bill Maher. Okay. I'm just curious. Did you and these folks who would go on to be very successful actors, did you ever talk about your dreams with each other or what you wanted to do or anything like that?
- [22:18]
Alfre Woodard
I didn't. Maybe people did, but I've never shared my goals aloud with anybody until I got to. I was backstage at the Taper we were doing for colored girls. There was. It was the LA fella girls.
- [22:35]
Tanya Mosley
After Boston University. Right. You moved to la where everybody else went to New York, but you chose la.
- [22:40]
Alfre Woodard
Because my whole orientation into what would be my purpose was film. So I came to LA and I was saying, oh, I'm going to LA to be in films. And people were going, woulda sold out already. She's going to Hollywood to be in the movies.
- [22:59]
Tanya Mosley
Because at the time, was theater considered where actors would go? Is that kind of the thought?
- [23:04]
Alfre Woodard
Well, if you're in a conservatory and the work that you're doing is classic plays in theater. But they didn't even give you the reality of it. We all thought we could go off to the Open Gate theater and do Brecht for the rest of our lives. But again, I'm sitting there going, mm, mm, mm, in la. And so I did tell a couple of friends, I said, I'm going to la. And then a guy, Gary Bass, who was from Tulsa as well, he said, I'm going with you. And then Brenda, who was from Lakeland, Florida, and Noreen.
- [23:40]
Tanya Mosley
Noreen was from Rochester, did they continue on being actors?
- [23:45]
Alfre Woodard
No. Gary had more skills. I had no marketable skills. I still don't. I can cook, but don't tell me what to cook. I know. So, you know, people learn that they could do other things. And everybody has a point where they say, okay, I give. And you just know that so many people who I have trained with and others that I would do plays with, you know, on a local level, it's what it takes to stay in our industry. Doesn't have anything to do with talent. It's a plus if you have talent. And it's a super plus if you know that that talent doesn't originate in you.
- [24:35]
Tanya Mosley
And you knew that very early on. Was there a moment, though, when you felt like, I give too? Did you ever have those moments?
- [24:43]
Alfre Woodard
No. No.
- [24:46]
Tanya Mosley
I love the way you said that, too. You almost sounded disgusted.
- [24:51]
Alfre Woodard
Not disgusted, but like, girl, I'm a daughter of Greenwood, I'm a Woodard, I'm a Robinson. You know, there's nothing in my history to know to do that. I don't know how to do that. My father would say. I'd say, oh, I'm gonna, you know, in all black Marian Anderson Junior High School, I'm going to run for parliamentarian. Why don't you run for president? Oh, they're just going to let a guy do it. And that was in my school when it was there were only 10 black kids. Oh, you know, they're going to let a guy do it and all my father would always say, he goes, well, then you got to figure out a way to get it from him, don't you? And so that was. You never said, I can't because somebody won't let me. It's like, well, what do you want? Okay, so now figure out a way around them.
- [25:46]
Tanya Mosley
One of your first critically acclaimed performances was as Doris in Hill Street Blues. And this was 1983, and you were part of this, the first show. You were in a couple of the episodes, but the first one was Doris in Wonderland, and I actually have a clip from that episode. Doris is being interrogated by police, and she's being interrogated because while she was out applying for a job, her son, who was five years old, was home alone and an officer responding to a call about a potential burglar shot him and he dies. And now police are asking her what happened. Let's listen.
- [26:25]
Commercial Announcer
I want you to tell me what happened, Mrs. Robson.
- [26:32]
Alfre Woodard
Nothing to tell. Why did you leave your son alone in the apartment? I had to go stand in line for a job. There's only taken the first 20 people, so I had to get there early as I could.
- [26:52]
Commercial Announcer
I see. What job?
- [26:56]
Alfre Woodard
Where did you stand in line? Excuse me? Let's make this clear, as my client
- [27:00]
Tanya Mosley
is a client under arrest or not.
- [27:01]
Commercial Announcer
She is not.
- [27:02]
Alfre Woodard
Is she free to leave? Not at this time. Mrs. Robson, I'd advise you not to answer any further questions. What's the difference? They asked me, I'd answer him. The gas company had the jobs.
- [27:19]
Commercial Announcer
And why didn't you have someone stay with your son?
- [27:26]
Alfre Woodard
I couldn't afford to sit her I was already owing her $2. My boy was hungry, and if I didn't get a job, he wasn't gonna eat. Are you saying I killed my boy? Are you saying that I killed him?
- [27:58]
Tanya Mosley
That is my guest, Alfre Woodard, in Hill street blues from 1983. Oh, my gosh. There's a line a critic wrote about your performance. He said, when Doris tells the cop who killed her son, I don't hate you, because that happens later when she talks with that police officer. This critic says, you summoned a moral authority that's impossible to fake. And I felt the same thing. There's so much innocence and restraint in your portrayal and this portrayal in particular. First off, you know, I have to say, I had never seen it before, and I immediately thought about Tamir Rice in 2014, who had been shot by police while playing with a toy gun. And I thought, wow, this was 40 years prior. The story is almost exact. So that. That was heartbreaking. But also that, like, if. If this was portrayed today on television, first off, I feel like it would be much more sensational, possibly. But also, maybe the trope of the angry black mother would come out the. The mother who was angry and mad and upset at this. And you didn't play that card at all. Like you. You played this role as a mother who is completely shell shocked and also is really in a position where she had no other choice. And she's laying it bare.
- [29:26]
Alfre Woodard
She didn't have anybody to watch her child, so she obviously doesn't have people. So she's relying on things that we cannot touch, people we cannot see is her strength. So it doesn't surprise me. That doesn't surprise me. But I've got to find a way to say that honestly and not put Alfre's activist. Because I've been an activist since I could walk, practically. I walked precinct with my parents when I was 10 years old in Tulsa
- [29:57]
Tanya Mosley
because it would have been. Yeah, it would have been, like, completely reasonable for you to play that hand and be angry.
- [30:02]
Alfre Woodard
Yeah. But also, I have always understood rising above. And so it was a choice. And also, her son is gone. Right. She has to go deeper because he's already. He's already gone. So I gotta. I gotta follow him. I gotta go with him. I don't have time to stand here and spend this moment. That is the last time I'm gonna be able to smell his clothes dealing with your ass. So, I mean, see, that was Alfre, but that's who didn't need to be in that scene.
- [30:42]
Tanya Mosley
Let's Take a short break. If you're just joining us, my guest is Alfre Woodard. We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.
- [30:48]
Commercial Announcer
This message is from ATT. With your Summer Essential. The iPhone 17 Pro, its center stage front camera auto adjusts the frame to fit everyone into group selfies. Right now at, at and t. Ask how you can get iPhone 17 Pro on them with eligible iPhone. Trade in any condition requires trade in of iPhone 15 or higher, excluding iPhone 16e and 17e. Requires eligible plan. Terms and restrictions apply. Subject to change. Visit att.com iPhone for details. New shows, new music, new movies. Keeping up with pop culture sometimes feels
- [31:25]
Tanya Mosley
like a full time job.
- [31:26]
Commercial Announcer
Thankfully, over at Pop Culture Happy Hour, it's literally our job. We break down what's actually worth watching, listening to and pretending you already knew about. So the next time someone says, did you see, you can say, yeah, obviously. Follow NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour wherever you get your podcasts.
- [31:45]
Tanya Mosley
My favorite films of yours are not necessarily the ones where you're playing against an institution, but where you're rooted in community. And I think I told you right before we started, Crooklyn Holiday Heart down in the Delta, directed by Maya Angelou. Yes, I read. So you could tell me if this is true or not. She made everyone call her Dr. Angelou, but she told you you could call her Maya.
- [32:14]
Alfre Woodard
Okay. So I knew her. And so, you know, she's a poet. Poets are used to working alone. And she might be a dancer, she did all kinds of stuff. But her heart, she was a poet. So she's coming to the most sort of communal, creative effort you could make is a film set. There's at least 100 people and sometimes three times that amount. And everybody is telling that, bringing their bit, their department, whatever their discipline is together to the director, the filmmaker, to tell that story, to piece it into one whole thing. So she we're there and people running around doing things, there's like, Maya, what do you feel about this Colorado Maya? And she goes, everybody, everybody come, come, come around. Let's just. Yeah. And everybody's like, they're so excited to be with Maya. She said, My name is Dr. Angelo. You will refer to me as Dr. Angelo.
- [33:24]
Tanya Mosley
What legends you know, you're sitting with and working with. Just to let folks know, down in the Delta, you play a mother who's living in Chicago who kind of has some problems, maybe a little bit of substance abuse problems and things like that. And your mother sends you down home.
- [33:45]
Alfre Woodard
MARY Dallas, baby.
- [33:46]
Tanya Mosley
Yes. So you can get yourself Clean and together. And you do. It's like this film and so many of those films of that time period, you're letting us into the interior lives of people, of black people, real black people. Yes. And also the pacing of it is so. It's so slow compared to today. It's like a slice of life. Those stories don't really get made like that today.
- [34:16]
Alfre Woodard
No, they don't. We live at a different pace. We don't give ourselves the courtesy of time. Look at me. I sound like the person. I'm not getting that big tin bird in the sky.
- [34:31]
Tanya Mosley
Well, the thing about it, Alfrey, is that I think before going back through and watching all these films, I might have been like, okay, yeah, that sounds kind of like an older person complaining. But there was something so beautiful and real, and it offered a totality. It was like having a. A full, full course meal in front of me instead of like cheap fast food, you know, where it tastes good in the moment. Do you what is lost with that? Because one of the things I just felt is like, wow, this is a true representation of black life at a certain period.
- [35:05]
Alfre Woodard
And, you know, a lot of the country and certainly the world didn't know we were as complex and comfortable, naturally complex and smart and whole, because we've never been presented that way on screen. The whole point is storytelling is for the health of the community, and it always has been since the griots, since people first stood up around a fire.
- [35:41]
Tanya Mosley
We need stories like food and water.
- [35:43]
Alfre Woodard
That's how we know who we are. The recreating, the retelling of the story lets the tribe look at itself. Laugh, cry, get scared. But to reflect and to know how to walk forward. What we're called to do is to tell stories. And if the stories can't be healing, then it's invalid.
- [36:14]
Tanya Mosley
In 2019, you were in the film Clemency, and you play Bernadine Williams, a prison warden in a maximum security facility who oversees executions. And I want to actually play a scene from it. Your character is sitting across from an inmate. She has come to know a man who is about to be put to death, and she's walking him through it, every single step, down to the drugs that will move through his body. Let's listen.
- [36:43]
Alfre Woodard
Four hours from the execution, all communication with outside parties will cease. That includes Ms. Lametta, friends, family members. But you can be with the chaplain the entire day, all the way through the procedure. You will have to take your clothes off, wear the shirt, the pants, the shoes issued to you. When it's time for the procedure. You will be walked to the chamber where five officers will restrain you to the gurney. A medical professional will prepare you for your injection. Officer will insert the metazolin that will render you unconscious. The second drug is pancuronium bromide, which causes paralyzation. The last drug is potassium chloride, which will cease heart function. At that point. Medical personnel will confirm the execution complete. Now, do you want to talk to Mr. Lameta about this later? You can, but do you have any questions? Do you have any family that would like to claim your body?
- [38:00]
Tanya Mosley
Oh, Alfre, you're crying. Yeah. Tell me why you're emotional after listening to that.
- [38:07]
Alfre Woodard
You know, when I work, I don't remember lines from things I do, but I remember. I have emotional memory of each moment and. And how I got there. And I'll tell you, it was easier to shoot clemency than it was to do the homework for it. Chinoya took me on a two week prison tour.
- [38:35]
Tanya Mosley
That's the director? Yeah, producer Chinoya.
- [38:37]
Alfre Woodard
She took me on a prison tour of Ohio prisons because she had worked for about eight years teaching screenwriting to women inmates. Anyway, that was the tough part. And probably everybody that was on the row when we were doing that, at least half of them are gone now.
- [38:59]
Tanya Mosley
Because you met with real inmates who were on death row. You also met with wardens. You met with female wardens who were doing the job. And I thought this was such an interesting part of it, because you thought going into it, what kind of person would do this job? And then you met them and you said, okay, yeah, these are the kind of women I would be in a book club with.
- [39:21]
Alfre Woodard
And this is who you want, if you're not going to change the law, this is who you want to be in charge, to be with the incarcerated, first of all, and to be with people, to walk them all the way through this. And so I'm always interested in if it's something I know, there's no need to do it. You know, the great thing about being an actor is you have to learn something. Not just the skill, knowing about the skill of what your character is doing, but you got to come off your own opinions to do something. I would be a vigil person. I was like a prison guard. Hmm. But when I went there and met them. And again, you go with your heart open and you listen. You listen with your heart. And I learned talking to them, they are respected all the way through. All the way through. And for most of the time, the guys or the ladies walk in the line. Nobody's respected them when they were young, when they were little, when they were a teenager, whenever, when they did that thing and when they did that awful thing. But especially on the row, you're with them for at least 10 years and longer usually before their appeals are exhausted. So that group of people and the majors that are there with them, those are co workers, those are people you see every day. So it's like turning once somebody in your office going, um, Betty, we're going to have to kill you today. And we're going to have to do it.
- [40:55]
Tanya Mosley
Let's take a short break. My guest is award winning actor Alfre Woodard. This is FRESH AIR.
- [41:01]
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- [41:34]
Tanya Mosley
The number of actresses like you, black actresses your age working at your level has never been large. I'm thinking about CCH Pounder, Phylicia Rashad, Cicely Tyson, Angela Bassett. You all know each other. I can imagine you at one point or another have gone for the same roles. And how do you work through that? How do you all continue to stay and keep each other grounded knowing that there are just a few of you? And just by virtue of the way the industry is, you're kind of gonna have to be pit against each other.
- [42:09]
Alfre Woodard
Well, we don't pit ourselves against each other. I don't. I started a thing called Sistas soiree.
- [42:15]
Tanya Mosley
Yes.
- [42:16]
Alfre Woodard
And the reason I did.
- [42:18]
Tanya Mosley
And let's talk about what the Sistas soiree is. It's a pre Oscar party.
- [42:22]
Alfre Woodard
Yes.
- [42:22]
Tanya Mosley
Right. With black and Latina actresses.
- [42:24]
Alfre Woodard
Yes.
- [42:25]
Tanya Mosley
Okay.
- [42:26]
Alfre Woodard
And the reason I started it was, you know, people would say things like, oh, you're so great. It's too bad there's not any roles for black women. It was like, no, I have to answer you. If it's the Queen of England. Yeah, let all the Kate's be Queen Elizabeth. But if there's 99 other roles, then shame on you for not seeing all these women who are not only prolific but profound. They have a track record and they have made bank for people. And so I said, okay, this is what we're going to do. And I got tired of hearing you know, fans. And we love our fans going like, mm, they want to pit you against each other. You know, who would have been better in this? You know what? You don't do that to the Kates. Don't do that to us. And the thing is, we have more in common with each other than we do with anybody else. The sisters. And so I said, we have to. We have to get together. I started having the soiree. The first people I honored was Taraji and Viola were nominated in the first year.
- [43:34]
Tanya Mosley
Taraji T. Henson and Viola Davis.
- [43:36]
Alfre Woodard
And I said, we're going to lift y' all up before y' all go on that red carpet, because we don't care what happens there. We celebrate people. We don't. We don't put prizes on them.
- [43:48]
Tanya Mosley
You also invite women who should have been nominated.
- [43:51]
Alfre Woodard
Exactly. And so when that. When you say that handful, I like taking that picture because there's going to be at least 30 people there. Sometimes, you know, we would send out the 40 invitations, and I would pray that more than 30 wouldn't come because I couldn't put the bill for it.
- [44:11]
Tanya Mosley
Too many, right?
- [44:12]
Alfre Woodard
You got to, like, keep it. But I said, you come by yourself. No partners, no reps, anybody. And people, you get there, and everybody just goes, come in here. And everybody loved on each other so hard. When we got there, everybody just wanted to talk, just talk. And we did that. And intimacies and secrets were shared, and people said, I need to say this. This is what I'm feeling like. And everybody came to that person. Everybody talked. And when we were together and on the road, you can call. You know, who to call when you're feeling this way or if something comes up. And. And people started to. To mentor each other of the. Of the same age. You know, I didn't want to hear another, you know, rep say something like, well, yeah, if that beat turns it down and you got a good shot.
- [45:06]
Tanya Mosley
They've said that to you before?
- [45:07]
Alfre Woodard
No, not my people, but I've heard other people say it.
- [45:10]
Tanya Mosley
Yeah.
- [45:10]
Alfre Woodard
I wouldn't be with somebody who would
- [45:12]
Tanya Mosley
say, like, to you.
- [45:13]
Alfre Woodard
But the thing is, I put it back on the world. It's like, here are these people. Now you tell me you can't find that.
- [45:23]
Tanya Mosley
Alfre Woodard, this has been an honor and a pleasure. Thank you so much.
- [45:28]
Alfre Woodard
You are so welcome, Tanya. I love sitting here with you. I listen to you. You are. You're just as beautiful as you are smart, and I'm very proud of you. So it's an honor to sit with you.
- [45:44]
Tanya Mosley
Alfre Woodard stars in the new Netflix sci fi series the Burroughs. Tomorrow on FRESH air, we remember one of jazz's greatest improvisers and tenor saxophonists, Sonny Rollins. He died Monday at the age of 95. We'll listen back to our 1994 interview with him. I hope you can join us. Fresh air's executive producer is sam brigger. Our technical director and engineer is audrey bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by phyllis meyers, roberta shorrock, ann marie baldonado, lauren krenzel, teresa madden, monique nazareth, susan yakundi, anna bauman and nico gonzalez whistler. Our digital media producer is molly cb nesper. Thea chaloner directed today's show with terry gross. I'm tanya mosley.